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Most of us have read history. Little known fact: as a young teenager I was a fan of the idea of communism. Then I realized that every attempt at communism, ex

Most of us have read history. Little known fact: as a young teenager I was a fan of the idea of communism. Then I realized that every attempt at communism, except possibly the kibbutz movement in Israel, has ended in horrible famines, genocides and general horror. So today say with everyone else: Let's not try that experiment again. Even my ex-colleague who is an actual communist admitted that he had mixed feelings about it: "enthusiastic believers like me are typically the first to get killed" he said.

claudiawerner 6y ago
> Most of us have read history. That's not the best argument, given that the Marxist school of history (as exemplified by Eric Hobsbawm, who was respected by historians on all sides) is quite popular among professional historians.
- reitanqild 6y ago
  I don't understand how this is supposed to change anything? Every experiment with communism so far has ended with famine an/or genocide. I don't want to be part of another experiment and I don't want my friends to suffer it either.
  - claudiawerner 6y ago
    > I don't understand how this is supposed to change anything? Your argument was that those who are ignorant of history are in favor of Communism. This is cast into doubt by the fact that there are respected Marxist historians. Alain Badiou has some good arguments for "trying" Communism given its history; in particular, he has the example of Fermat's Last Theorem, which for hundreds of years had many attempts at solutions, each of which ending in failure (sometimes disastrous), though many of which opened new areas of mathematics. He argues that previous attempts at creating Communist society likewise have given rise to key insights and questions, which we are in a more prepared position to answer - he names two in particular: the Paris Commune and the Shanghai Commune (two examples you may have forgotten about) which raise such questions. Many people, communists or not, do not want to suffer under capitalism, and they don't want their friends to do so either.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
TheNorthman 6y ago
Ignoring the obviously ludicrous claim that you've ``read history'', as if history is some night where all cows are black. Little known fact: Young teenagers don't read theory. If you, as a teenager, had known what communism is perhaps this empty rhetoric of `attempts' would cease. Quoting Marx: > Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. Or perhaps let's put context on the `general horror', to quote Jacques Derrida: > For it must be cried out, at a time when some have the audacity to neo-evangelize in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has finally realized itself as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity. Instead of singing the advent of the ideal of liberal democracy and of the capitalist market in the euphoria of the end of history, instead of celebrating the ‘end of ideologies’ and the end of the great emancipatory discourses, let us never neglect this obvious, macroscopic fact, made up of innumerable, singular sites of suffering: no degree of progress allows one to ignore that never before, in absolute figures, have so many men, women and children been subjugated, starved or exterminated on the earth.

claudiawerner 6y ago

> Most of us have read history. That's not the best argument, given that the Marxist school of history (as exemplified by Eric Hobsbawm, who was respected by historians on all sides) is quite popular among professional historians.

reitanqild 6y ago
I don't understand how this is supposed to change anything? Every experiment with communism so far has ended with famine an/or genocide. I don't want to be part of another experiment and I don't want my friends to suffer it either.
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  > I don't understand how this is supposed to change anything? Your argument was that those who are ignorant of history are in favor of Communism. This is cast into doubt by the fact that there are respected Marxist historians. Alain Badiou has some good arguments for "trying" Communism given its history; in particular, he has the example of Fermat's Last Theorem, which for hundreds of years had many attempts at solutions, each of which ending in failure (sometimes disastrous), though many of which opened new areas of mathematics. He argues that previous attempts at creating Communist society likewise have given rise to key insights and questions, which we are in a more prepared position to answer - he names two in particular: the Paris Commune and the Shanghai Commune (two examples you may have forgotten about) which raise such questions. Many people, communists or not, do not want to suffer under capitalism, and they don't want their friends to do so either.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

TheNorthman 6y ago

Ignoring the obviously ludicrous claim that you've ``read history'', as if history is some night where all cows are black. Little known fact: Young teenagers don't read theory. If you, as a teenager, had known what communism is perhaps this empty rhetoric of `attempts' would cease. Quoting Marx: > Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. Or perhaps let's put context on the `general horror', to quote Jacques Derrida: > For it must be cried out, at a time when some have the audacity to neo-evangelize in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has finally realized itself as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity. Instead of singing the advent of the ideal of liberal democracy and of the capitalist market in the euphoria of the end of history, instead of celebrating the ‘end of ideologies’ and the end of the great emancipatory discourses, let us never neglect this obvious, macroscopic fact, made up of innumerable, singular sites of suffering: no degree of progress allows one to ignore that never before, in absolute figures, have so many men, women and children been subjugated, starved or exterminated on the earth.